eShop

When backing a Kickstarter idea, it’s always surreal meeting face to face with the folks behind it. The team constantly updates supporters on the project’s status, but getting a hands-on preview of the aforementioned work is like peeking behind the heavy curtains. You expect to see a bizarre circus — the Keebler elves wrestling with Chupacabras — but at a recent Nintendo eShop event, it was just Yacht Club Games’ Sean Velasco showing offShovel Knight.

“They don’t have games like this anymore,” he said. “We want this to be a gateway game. Getting into mental space.”

And that mind-set he’s talking about is the 1980s NES era, a time when titles were brutally tough, but gamers powered through the most grueling of levels without the benefit of save points or refillable health.

*Update: It looks like Nintendo is doing a tour of some sort. They’ll be putting out Nintendo 3DS demo pods in San Francisco’s Pier 39 at the main entrance from March 11 to April 3. You can check out the system there Monday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

A few weeks ago, one of the biggest questions I had when I met with Nintendo and talked about the Nintendo 3DS was the system’s purpose. With all the nifty features, I wondered would this be a game system or an entertainment device? The difference is more than semantics; it determines how the Japanese company positions the system. It could also hint at the scope of Nintendo’s ambitions.

The Nintendo 3DS could just be the logical successor to the Nintendo DS, an already amazing gaming machine, or perhaps it could be something more. By being an entertainment device, it could possibly be the next iPod, a device that transcended being just a music player and turned the industry on its head. The answer I seemed to get after the GDC announcements is that it’s a gradually turning into more of the latter.

I followed up more on the Netflix issue and other details about the system and its March 27 launch with Marc Franklin, the company’s director of public relations. He answered my entertainment vs. video game question diplomatically, saying that “Nintendo is an entertainment company, but at its core, it’s a video game company.”

Marc Franklin/Courtesy of Nintendo

It sounds like games will be the Nintendo 3DS’ bread and butter, but the addition of Netflix and 3D videos could be steps toward broadening the system’s appeal. Franklin said that the Nintendo 3DS can act like another screen for gamers. Players can watch a movie on their Wii and continue where they left off on the Nintendo 3DS. They can even watch different content on the two systems provided they have a Netflix plan that supports that.

The 3D trailers is a separate issue, and it sounds like Nintendo’s eShop will be the place for that and other 3D content. Franklin mentioned it as a place for original downloadable games, demos, virtual console titles and short-form videos such as comedy clips and 3D music videos. Nintendo will act as a caretaker for the content that’s shown on this channel. As for the next step — 3D movies — Franklin said that there would be none right now. That’s disappointing to hear, but I’m hoping that changes in the future.

From the sound of it, the eShop is a bigger deal than what most people are expecting. It seems more akin to Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network than the Nintendo Channel on the Wii. The eShop is part of the reason that the Nintendo 3DS is no longer region-free. Franklin said, “In order to provide all those things, we have to have it region encoded.” Whether this is a good trade-off for hard-core gamers remains to be seen. Earlier versions of Nintendo’s handhelds let people play Japanese games on American system. Of course, being able to wirelessly transfer most of your Nintendo DSi content to the new system automatically takes some of the sting out of that issue.

Nintendogs + cats

As for the launch of the system, one of the problems that Nintendo will run into is conveying the visuals of the system. No matter how attractively you write it up, people can’t exactly get the effect of 3D without glasses without actually seeing the system in person. Screenshots that run with games have labels “2D Image of Nintendo 3DS game.” On the web and on television, viewers also can’t get that 3D effect. It’s limited to just the screen. “That’s one of the challenges we have,” Franklin said.

That means one of the best advertisement for the system will be word of mouth. People will have to see the screen, become believers and tell their friends about it. To support that, Frankling said that Nintendo is going to do a lot of sampling. That means the company will be making an effort to get as many people as possible to try out the system.

“We’re putting a huge effort on the road to take it to consumers,” he said. He mentioned that there’ll be kiosks and events in the works. Personally, I’m guess that a mall tour could be on the way. The 3D screen is one of the drawbacks and some of the brilliance of the Nintendo 3DS. It’s not something you can experience vicariously through magazines, television or the Web. You have to see it live and once they see it, gamers will be sold.